For man whose Griffey cards were stolen, it’s Griffey to the rescue

Chris Fevurly had been collecting Ken Griffey Jr. baseball cards since “The Kid’s” rookie season in 1989, when Fevurly was just 11 years old. The collection was special for Fevurly, now in his mid-30s, as such memorabilia are for hardcore collectors.

Ken Griffey Jr. (Getty Images)

But in January, burglars stole most of Fevurly’s collection of 500 Griffey cards from his Wichita, Kan., home — along with his big-screen TV, according to a report by Wichita’s KAKE-TV. Of course, Fevurly was crushed.

“Putting monetary value on that is kind of hard to do,” Fevurly told KAKE in January. “I’m at a loss for words.”

After the TV report, Fevurly’s loss was well-known in Wichita. A friend organized a fundraiser to help replace the TV. People from Collector Revolution, an online sports-memorabilia community, sent some Griffey cards to help replenish Fevurly’s losses, according to a report last week by Yahoo Sports. But Fevurly couldn’t have expected what would happen after Gregg Marshall, head coach of the Wichita State men’s basketball team, heard about it all.

Marshall knows Roberto Clemente Jr., son of the late Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Famer, who in turn knows Griffey, reported Yahoo’s David Brown. Sympathetic to Fevurly’s loss, Clemente went to Wichita and sat with Fevurly and Fevurly’s 6-year-old son, Nolan, for a Shockers basketball game — and arranged a phone call with Griffey himself.

Griffey’s longtime agent, Brian Goldberg, said Clemente easily persuaded Griffey they needed to do something. Griffey simply couldn’t get away, so Clemente went in his place. Clemente didn’t want Fevurly to be disappointed, but in reality he probably made for a good buffer.

“That’s what I told Roberto,” Fevurly said. “He sat with us the whole game. I told him, if Griffey himself had shown up, I probably would have had a panic attack. As it was, when Roberto introduced himself, I was still like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.'”

Griffey might not have been there in person, but there was plenty of time for a call. So they connected at halftime. Off the bat, Griffey told Fevurly how he learned of the stolen cards: Griffey has a cousin in the Wichita area who works as a police officer. He had seen the story.

According to the Yahoo report, Chris and Nolan Fevurly spoke for 10 minutes with Griffey about, well, a lot of things — but mainly what the Mariners legend and likely Hall of Famer is up to these days. Apparently, when they spoke on the phone, Griffey was at home in Florida packing lunch for his kids — and avoiding dirty dishes — while his wife, Melissa, was out of town.

Junior probably wasn’t making lunch for son Trey, who’s a freshman football player at Arizona, but daughter Taryn is a high-school senior who’s being recruited in basketball. Then there’s Tevin Kendall, Ken and Melissa Griffey’s adopted son, who is 10 years old.

“(Griffey) started talking to my son a little bit, which I thought was super-cool,” Fevurly told Yahoo. “Ken asked him who his favorite baseball player was and my son, who’s 6, said ‘Ken Griffey Jr.’ And Roberto’s joking, like, ‘You never got to see him play! How is this possible?’ Well, I probably force-feed ‘Ken Burns’ Baseball’ down my son’s throat a little too much.”